6 Rules For Good Government From The World Of Narnia

The danger of following politics is that you always follow politics. You start to see politics in everything: the subplot of your daughter’s school play, the choice of wine at your neighbor’s party, and even how the grocery clerk greets you. It can happen anytime, even during your child’s bedtime story.

I was recently reading C.S. Lewis’s classic, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” to two of my younger children, and something struck me I hadn’t noticed in previous readings. Perhaps the debate between keeping Obamacare or replacing it with Obamacare lite was on my mind. Or perhaps my thoughts still lingered over the 2016 election, in which both major-party candidates advocated for big government to solve society’s problems.

At any rate, near the end of the book Lewis describes Narnia under the rule of the Pevensies: Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. It’s a Golden Age, and all is well. So how does Lewis envision the rulers of this ideal society? “And they made good laws and kept the peace and saved good trees from being unnecessarily cut down, and liberated young dwarfs and young satyrs from being sent to school, and generally stopped busybodies and interferers and encouraged ordinary people who wanted to live and let live.”

In other words, the Narnian government was the opposite in almost every aspect to modern forms of government. Let’s look at Lewis’s suggestions for an ideal government, working backwards.